Building resilience and credibility as an upcoming HR professional at work is important for all aspects of your career. It helps position you as a valuable employee, demonstrates your abilities, and is crucial for positioning yourself positively in advancing your career. There are many ways to build resilience and credibility at work.
As an upcoming HR professional, it is important to understand that you will be stretched more than ever to be both more creative and innovative in how to upskill and manage people (internal and external clients).
The workplace presents a different range of stressors to employees.
Resilience at work is now recognised as a defining characteristic of employees who deal well with the stresses and strains of the modern workplace.
Resilience is a person’s capacity to respond to pressure and the demands of daily life. Dictionary definitions include concepts like flexibility suppleness, durability, strength, speed of recovery and buoyancy. In short, resiliency affects our ability to ‘bounce back’.
At work, resilient people are better able to deal with the demands placed upon them, especially where those demands might require them to be dealing with constantly changing priorities and a heavy workload.
Resilience is not a characteristic gifted to some individuals and not others. The key here is that resilience is not a passive quality, but an active process. How we approach life, and everything it can throw at us, has a massive impact on our experience.
Developing resilience is a personal journey involving thoughts, behaviour and actions. Anyone can do it.
Nine Ways to build resilience at work
1. Cherish social support and interaction. Good relationships with family and friends and others are vital. Being active in the wider community also helps.
2. Treat problems as a learning process. Develop the habit of using challenges as opportunities to acquire or master skills and build achievement.
3. Avoid making a drama out of a crisis. Stress and change are part of life. How we interpret and respond to events has a big impact of how stressful we find them.
4. Celebrate your successes. Take time at the end of each day to review what went well and congratulate yourself. This trains the mind to look for success rather than dwelling on negativity and ‘failure’.
5. Develop realistic life goals for guidance and a sense of purpose. Do something each day to move towards them. Again, small is beautiful; one small step amid the chaos of a busy day will help.
6. Take positive action. Doing something in the face of adversity brings a sense of control, even if it doesn’t remove the difficulty.
7. Nurture a positive view of yourself. Developing confidence in your ability to solve problems and trusting your instincts helps to build resiliency.
8. Keep a realistic perspective. Place challenging or painful events in the broader context of lifelong personal development.
9. Practice optimism. Nothing is either wholly good or bad. If we allow our thinking to dictate how we view something it will take over. Make your thinking work for your benefit, rather than letting it stymie you with doubt or by seeing only the bad side.
How do you build Credibility?Credibility is what makes others trust and rely on you at a workplace. Whether people at work listen to you and take you seriously or constantly ignore you may well depend on your credibility. It is also the key factor that can make managers trust you with the company’s next crucial project or presentation! Success at work depends on your credibility. Credibility is not something that is handed out at work but is rather built carefully. Here are four Cs on how to build your credibility at work.
Four Cs of Credibility:
1. Competent: – Success at work depends on your skill sets or competence. These skills include soft skills such as communication, coordination, empathy as well as technical skills. Successful employees are adept at assessing their own competence levels while working towards improving them. Whether you are a temporary or permanent employee, take time to objectively assess what skills and competencies you currently have and how you can improve them. Since technology, information and market dynamics constantly change, you have to be ready to adapt to these ongoing changes to stay updated. When you can demonstrate that you are an authority in your field, your credibility also soars.
To gain credibility, polish your credentials, skills, and competence levels. Obtain required licenses, certifications, or other qualifications required in your field of work. Take up or volunteer for high profile projects that showcase your abilities. Work towards building a successful track record with the timely and effective management of projects, tasks, or assignments.
2. Consistent: – Credible people are consistent. Their decision-making, delivery, reactions and processes are consistent. To be consistent, you must be mindful. It is easy to make snap judgments and react without thinking, but consistent people remain level-headed and vigilant, and this feeds credibility.
3. Candid: – Integrity is about being true to yourself and to others. Ensure there is complete harmony and honesty in what you think, say and do. Integrity is an important attribute that employers seek in potential employees. A person with integrity demonstrates sound ethical and moral principles and is consistent with customers, co-workers, and other stakeholders. An employee with integrity inspires the trust and confidence of superiors and colleagues. To boost credibility at the workplace, ensure you invest time in building a reputation for ethical and truthful behavior. Clarify your values and be open and truthful about your mistakes instead of hiding them.
4. Caring: – Caring is a major element outlined in “Radical Candor,” and should be in the list of must-haves. When someone has a vested interest in others or in an outcome, they care and it is evident. Truly caring about what’s best for people or organizations builds trust, encourages others to be candid with you, and leads to credibility. Successful supervisors work towards developing a rapport with co-workers and superiors to enhance cooperation and trust. It is not possible to please everyone all the time. However, a cheerful, optimistic attitude, gratitude and strong communication skills will help improve your likeability scores. Finally, take time to understand others’ opinions and concerns and always be willing to learn from others or from your own mistakes.
Credibility is key to leadership success, and in my experience, the four C’s outlined above are important elements that help people build and maintain credibility.
Building resilience and credibility at work requires effort and patience. While it cannot happen overnight, with a consistent focus on integrity, competence, communication, and feedback, you can boost your credibility levels at work overtime.